


Not My Home, Not Anymore

by daikenkai



Series: SP Drabble Bomb [3]
Category: South Park
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst but hopeful, Gen, M/M, Mental Illness, Pete was an emo fuck, South Park Drabble Bomb, Sucidal Ideation, Suicide Attempt, introspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-19
Updated: 2018-05-19
Packaged: 2019-05-09 03:42:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,888
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14708439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daikenkai/pseuds/daikenkai
Summary: As he's packing for college, Pete finds a letter he wrote but never intended to send.Letter for the May 2018 Drabble Bomb!





	Not My Home, Not Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> **Letter**.
> 
> I realize now my crutch is dialogue so I really appreciate these introspective pieces. Thanks to SakataRi for acting as beta!
> 
> TW: suicidal ideation, mentions of an attempt

The day is finally here and he’s sorting through his belongings, packing up his pathetic life. College seems to be the only way he’s going to escape this sad excuse for a town, so why shouldn’t he? His friends all left years ago and forgot about him. No, that’s not true. He’s just being dramatic in that typical Goth way.  They actually call and FaceTime him often, but it’s not the same. It’s that he’s by himself and somewhat on the brink of another Episode. Not quite there, but he can feel it like an itch in the back of his throat. He doesn’t give in though because he knows neither he nor his dad can afford even the little bit the insurance won’t pay and there are finally better things on the proverbial and literal horizon for him.

Still, he can’t help but wonder if that’s why his dad’s always so silent when Pete comes home, why he never answers him when he attempts to initiate conversation? No, he’s always been like that, and if anyone ever wondered why Pete turned out the way he did, all they have to do is come to the trailer park on the outskirts of the shittiest part of town. Another exaggeration, but he never got any visitors lately so the point stood.

Pete’s reached the almost morbid milestone of a quarter century.  Twenty-five years old and still living at home, how twisted is that? And in the armpit of South Park no less. But where else could he go? He has no marketable skills (okay, another lie) and the only person he ever truly loved left too, like everyone else who mattered. Except Pete let him, because Mike had stumbled upon an opportunity he shouldn’t pass up, not for his sake, and Pete just… He could have gone with Mike but his anxiety convinced him to stay behind, all the thoughts rushing together: _What if he leaves me? What if he finds someone better than me? What if we break up? What if I run out of money?_ It really explained why he never left his house much in those few years leading up to now except to go to work. Everything out there was too dangerous, unfamiliar.

But now Pete’s cleaning out his room and he finds a well-worn TUK shoebox he’d shoved under his bed, wondering to himself if he forgot about a pair of creepers. Instead of finding a surprise pair of shoes he misplaced, he finds the box stuffed with letters, the sight of it reminding him of a then and why it’d been stashed away. They weren’t neat, most were crumpled, not exactly treasured mementos.  But he notices one envelope sticking out: abused, worn, and with ‘ASSHOLE’ written in red, angry letters along the front. A dark curiosity gets the best of him and he slides it open, having forgotten what it was:

_Dear ~~Asshole~~ Dad, _

 Oh no. His two-week stint in inpatient. He reads on.

  _You know this is your fault, right? At least partly. The times you do talk to me you gaslight me and tell me there’s nothing wrong, that i need to take off that ‘silly’ eyeliner and go get a job instead of moping about. Happy now? Am I just moping now???_

He pauses and glances at the scars on his wrists, a deep and puffy silver that sometimes he catches himself wishing weren’t scars at all. If Henrietta hadn’t sensed something was off by him not responding to her messages that day (or it could have been the overabundance of death on which he seemed to fixate, at least more than usual amongst their clique), he might have succeeded. Meeting Mike and having his friends there make him glad he hadn’t but they were all gone now. Well, they hadn’t abandoned him, per se, he was just being gloomy in the face of change.

  _I honestly don’t see the point of writing this letter as you’re never going to FUCKING read it just like you never pay attention to anything I fucking do._ _I won awards all throughout_ _school and shit for art but you never fucking cared_ _. The things most important to me you never fucking cared about, so what did I do? I grew up thinking that’s how life is: nothing matters and nothing is important. I turned out great, huh? Guess I’ll die._

He decided to go see a psychiatrist when he was fifteen (diagnosed with depression and anxiety) and for several years he’d been good about taking his medication. He got all the forms signed without parental consent because he learned early on how to forge his dad’s signature which was helpful because his dad wouldn’t have taken him even if he’d asked. Really all that he did was say he was going to talk to his dad in the parking lot, but he always hid where no one could see him, signed the papers, and brought them back in. No one suspected a thing.

He stopped taking his meds when he was nineteen and through the chainsmoking and constant reassurance from his friends everything was okay, for a while. Then something Flipped and he didn’t know what it was but it felt like he could have rivaled Stan back when they were 10: everything was shit, everything sounded like, looked and felt like shit, and he couldn’t stop the negative thoughts, what he’d later been told was suicidal ideation. It truly had felt like everything would be better if he just died. Damn, he had been such an emo little shit, hadn’t he?

His phone was — still is — his lifeblood and though he only had two people who messaged him (three now), he always messaged back immediately (even though it still takes Michael four hours to respond). He remembers being in the bathroom that day, razorblade in hand, phone on the sink. Everything went white and red, and he dropped to the ground like a puppet with cut strings. Next thing he knew Henrietta was there, yelling at him, telling him he’s stupid for worrying them and then came the “This is for your own good.” _What is?_ She stayed with him the entire time they were in the emergency room, and he agreed the best thing to do was go away for a while. His anxiety had him strung out the whole time they were waiting and Henrietta assured him that she and Michael would come see him every time he could have visitors (and they did, even wrote him letters which filled that creepers shoebox).

  _I don’t understand why you blame me for something that was beyond my control. I didn’t ask to be born and I certainly didn’t ask for_ _M_ _om to leave us once she realized she didn’t want me. I know you loved her,_ _D_ _ad, but unfortunately you didn’t wrap it up so_ _you were stuck with me_ _and I grew_ _up thinking love is pointless, that everything is pointless because that’s what_ you _fucking taught me: at some point, everyone will leave me. Thanks, Dad._

He remembers the group therapist asked them to read these letters aloud but Pete wouldn’t have dared let anyone see him cry, not even Mike -- the only person he’d met there he liked and who genuinely wasn’t awful. There he goes again, framing everything in shades of negative when really the staff had been the first kind adults since his therapist, though some of the other patients were insufferable. Mike was a whole other level of fucking annoying, but he at least tried to make everyone smile. And when you’re in a place that’s so boring you might as well kill yourself (hardee-har-har), it helps. Kissing Mike helped, too. They were checked on every fifteen minutes so they had to be smart about how and where they did it, no one ever catching on. Mike always threatened to push their beds together but they were anchored down, much to his chagrin. Pete remembers rolling his eyes at the almost tragically romantic suggestion. Had he really thought he was the first to think of that? Kids from Denver were so fucking weird. Good thing Mike was cute. And weird.

  _I guess it isn’t all your fault but fuck if it doesn’t sum me up as a person. I wish you actually cared about me. I wish you understood my mental illnesses. I wish you talked to me. I wish you cared about anything I did but I need to get over it and know that you never will because I’m the reason Mom walked out. And since that’s the case, I’m sorry I exist then. Fuck you._

It had felt so good to write it out back then and it feels good to read it over again now after so long. The therapist in inpatient assured them they didn’t ever have to give their intended the letters, “That’s the point of unsent letters,” they’d said, and Pete had obviously no intentions of sending his since he’d forgotten he’d written it, left tucked away in the back of a shoebox and his subconscious as he worked to get better. He folds the letter back up and sets it aside forgoing the envelope.

 

* * *

 

His room is empty now. Several hours of packing and a dose of medication later, his entire room is in boxes. His bed and furniture will stay behind because the school has fully-furnished dorms. You’re never too old to go back to school, everyone says, but he still thinks being twenty-five at an art school seems a little ridiculous. It’s already pretentious enough he’s going to _art school._  His advisor informed him there are thousands of students there his age and older but he always thinks it’s just to make him feel better. It works, a little bit.

He made several trips from the trailer to his car (that he’d saved up, paid for and paid off himself) and loaded it full of boxes and totes. The drive will be long but he has Mike, Henrietta, and Michael to call and an mp3 player loaded with his favorite music and podcasts so he won’t feel lonely. That’s what’s kept him chained here for so long, the quiet anxiety that accompanies loneliness. (He’s supposed to have a roommate at school but he’ll take being lonely over meeting new, shitty people, thanks).

His dad comes home, which surprises Pete because he didn’t think he’d see him before he took off, and actually takes a moment to ask if he needed help, furthering his shock. Pete told him no, he was already done,  and went right back to sit in his empty bedroom. His dad would soon pass out in the worn La-Z boy, snoring like a train.

Pete manages to get a nap in on a bare mattress and once he wakes to his phone alarm he notices the letter next to it on his nightstand, folded and worn where it had been tossed away and feels a strange, final sense of clarity. He finds a pen and writes ‘DAD’ on the outer flap, leaving it on the tv tray next to the La-Z boy.

It is the last thing he does before he makes the trek to his new life in Savannah.

 

**Author's Note:**

> come scream with me about stuff on [tumblr](http://xigbarf.tumblr.com)!


End file.
